When Christianity began to collapse in Europe in the Nineteenth Century, cultural critics such as Matthew Arnold looked to art to reorient society. Given that religions arguably originate in the experience and attendant creativity around shamanism, Arnold’s notion, knowingly or not, goes back to archaic roots. 18 more words

Anyone acquainted with English-language Canadian poetry will know that it’s divided into a variety of mutually uncomprehending schools, a staid-of-affairs most recently borne out in a discussion thread concerning… 742 more words

What happens when poetry meets the moving image, when poetry goes “intermedia”? Here’s an interview with American Studies and Intermedia scholar Dr Martina Pfeiler on poetry film conducted during the Zebra Poetry Film Festival this October in Berlin. 59 more words

Kim Hyesoon’s viscerally charged poetry channels the violence of South Korea and global capitalism. She writes out of illness and ecstasy. Instead of standing aside and criticizing global capitalism, she moves through its sick movement with grotesque humor: In »I’m OK, I’m Pig«, she becomes the mass-slaughtered pigs. 445 more words

A pithy, short introduction to the poetry of Hyesoon:
“We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become “the paper made of human meat,” we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play. It is not possible to explain women’s poetry until you sympathize with how women painfully go through the experience of having these tattoos carved on their bodies. At this point, women’s language is the butcher’s language who sells his or her body. It is grotesque and miserable.”

Recently, a friend shared a link to an interview with Australian poet Robert Adamson citing this remark on craft as a teaser: “Poetry is song, every word in every line must work, each word transcribed like a note, each line connected to a breath.” 819 more words